Twitter flock out in the heat for regular neighborhood cleanup effort

The Twitter flock was out in the heat cleaning up the company’s mid-Market neighborhood and other parts of the city today as part of an ongoing “Friday For Good” volunteerism project.

Twitter vowed to help revitalize the neighborhood around its headquarters at Market and 10th in 2011, when it signed a lease – and got a six-year payroll tax break from the city. Twitter is perhaps the biggest company to settle into the neighborhood, which has long struggled with homelessness, crime, drugs and other issues despite a proximity to City Hall and large performing arts venues. Online communications startup Yammer and online payment company Square (started by Twitter’s Jack Dorsey) are also making the neighborhood home.

The Friday For Good program has been ambitious, sending employees out quarterly to plunge into projects right around the former San Francisco Mart building. Today the crew took on gardening, recording details on potholes, career counseling for youth and other chores. DISH Housing, St. Anthony’s, Larkin Street Youth Services and others took part. And, of course, the Twitter crew and participating agencies tweeted and shot Vine videos as they went.

Twitter says roughly 70% of its 1,500-employee local workforce lives in San Francisco, and 45 percent bike or walk to work at least once a week. Is the local commitment paying off for “The Twitterloin” as the neighborhood is now sometimes called?

“I think it’s definitely helped the neighborhood to have them here,” says Phillip Ma, manager of The Little Griddle restaurant across Market Street from the Twitter headquarters. “It’s helped other businesses move in. It’s definitely changed things for the better.”